Current Exhibits…

Re-Mapping the Publics…

Open by Appointment Only

Sweet Water Foundation welcomes you to the third exhibit in the Thought Barn: Re-Mapping the Publics…, an assemblage of art, artifacts, and reflections on city planning and development. Re-Mapping the Publics… offers a blueprint for re-mapping our city’s resources to create true common wealth - the spaces, structures, networks, resources, and opportunities essential to mending the urban fabric, healing communities, and equipping our neighborhoods to thrive, rather than merely survive.

Visit the Exhibit Page to register for an in-person visit and to view the virtual tour.

Past Installations…

We the Publics…Thought Barn

We the Publics...from Bounded Rationality to Unbounded Possibilities, is a catalytic assemblage of art, artifacts, and history exploring the many facets and dimensions of the publics and public trust. For over a decade, our work has been in the service of cultivating neighborhoods as we live our motto, “There GROWS the Neighborhood.” This exhibit shares the collective works and perspective of the Sweet Water Foundation community to provoke a reframing and reclaiming of the ‘Publics’ for all. We the Publics... was exhibited in the Thought Barn from October 2021 - September 2023. The exhibit can still be viewed virtually via the link below.

Experience the virtual We the Publics... exhibit.

Access We the Publics… learning resources.

Toward Common Cause The Commonwealth

Organized by the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, Toward Common Cause: Art Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 was a multi-venue exhibition taking place throughout 2021. As part of Toward Common Cause, Sweet Water Foundation hosted two collaborative, site-specific installations: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Hydrant, 41°47’22.662″ N – 87°37’38.364″ W and Mel Chin's Safehouse Temple Door.

well · ness at The Commonwealth
Thought Barn

well · ness at The Commonwealth was the inaugural exhibition in the Thought Barn that was a catalytic assemblage of art, artifacts, and history that explored the many facets and dimensions of water as the source of all life. This ‘living’ installation featured an emergent and participatory research opportunity that engaged a diverse range of global citizens of all walks of life to critically examine the precarity of this precious life source and establish a collective accountability framework. 

At the center of the exhibit was Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Well, which invited patrons to reconsider the reliability of our water access and the ways modern infrastructure disconnects us from resources.

To view a virtual tour of the exhibit, click here.

Re-Root + Redux
2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial

Re-Root + Redux borrows from the architectural language of Sweet Water Foundation’s main site, known as The Commonwealth. Designed in collaboration with Trillium Dell Timber Frame Construction, the structure is inspired by the framing and construction method of Chicago’s worker cottages -- once the dominant housing typology and the first standardized affordable housing in the city. The worker cottage structure is transformed into a gallery space with an installation reflecting the past, present, and future of the South Side, examining the evolution and devolution of land use, architectural structures, and housing from the Reconstruction Era to the Great Migration and urban renewal through the present day. In light of this history, the practices and projects fostered by the Sweet Water Foundation make possible new forms of live-work and collaborative economies that bring new life and re-root community in place.For more information, visit: https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/

Radical [Re]Constructions
SMART Museum of Art, University of Chicago

Radical [Re]Constructions connected the Smart Museum space to Sweet Water Foundation’s ongoing development of The Commonwealth. The installation featured a large, three-dimensional representation of a house, set against the Museum’s central lobby wall and constructed from salvaged materials including wood that apprentices from the Sweet Water Foundation finished with the traditional Japanese shou sugi ban charring technique. Other elements included architectural wall drawings, video elements, and a functional front porch or stoop that extended into the Smart’s lobby and café space.The installation also reached out into the Museum’s sculpture garden. A network of sculptural, multifunctional furniture made from reclaimed wood by Sweet Water Foundation’s master carpenter and apprentices provides inclusive spaces to sit, meet, and eat. Throughout 2017–2018, Radical [Re]Constructions served as the site for a series of interdisciplinary workshops and other programs on the subject of the built environment and issues like vacancy, community (re)development, displacement, and gentrification.Radical [Re]Constructions was Pratt and the Sweet Water Foundation’s first long-term museum project, and the sixth site-specific lobby installation in the Smart’s Threshold series.The SWF and Smart teams [de]constructed the installation in January of 2019. The relationship will continue outside of the museum through a new project, The [Re]Construction House.